Every week, Supercharged tackles a complex—and sometimes unusual—question about technology, science, psychology, and human existence to find out how we can approach life better in our rapidly changing world.

Dan Ariely Takes on 'Irrational' Economic ImpulsesDan Ariely: "My good friends Uri Gneezy (a professor at the University of California at San Diego) and Aldo Rustichini (a professor at the University of Minnesota) provided a very clever test of the long-term effects of a switch from social to market norms. A few years ago, they studied a day care center in Israel to determine whether imposing a fine on parents who arrived late to pick up their children was a useful deterrent. Uri and Aldo concluded that the fine didn't work well, and in fact it had long-term negative effects. Why? Before the fine was introduced, the teachers and parents had a social contract, with social norms about being late. Thus, if parents were late — as they occasionally were — they felt guilty about it — and their guilt compelled them to be more prompt in picking up their kids in the future. (In Israel, guilt seems to be an effective way to get compliance.) But once the fine was imposed, the day care center had inadvertently replaced the social norms with market norms. Now that the parents were paying for their tardiness, they interpreted the situation in terms of market norms. In other words, since they were being fined, they could decide for themselves whether to be late or not, and they frequently chose to be late."

MetroMileMetroMile: "Car insurance based on how much you drive. Pay a low base rate plus pennies per mile."

The Beguiling Promise Of John Goodenough's New Battery TechnologyForbes: "Google's Eric Schmidt tweeted this week about a new fast-charging battery technology from John Goodenough, the inventor of the lithium-ion battery, Dr. Maria Braga and his research team in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin."

I miss the days when I only had to pay once for a video gameBusiness Insider: "These days, game companies and developers are monetizing their games to their full potential. It’s not enough to sell a game just once: If you don’t sell extra content, you could be leaving millions of dollars on the table."

Amazon Erases Orwell Books From KindleIn George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”

Recurring Billing Models - Difference Between Tiered vs Volume PricingFuseBill: "This is the first in a mini-series of articles on "tiered, volume, and usage-based" pricing as part of metered price plans. At Fusebill we've found that many companies believe they have a “complex” pricing model - not because of anything inherent in the model itself, but because they find it difficult to track manually. We hope that these articles will provide better understanding of the different types of pricing within a metered price plan."

The Earth Is Flat, ExplainedGawker Black Bag: "Earlier today, rapper B.o.B. declared to his millions of Twitter followers that, despite everything they’ve been led to believe their entire lives, the earth is flat. And the weirdest part isn’t just that he believes the earth is flat, but that he’s not even remotely alone."